


As The Tall Grasses Grow

by renquise



Category: Assassin's Creed
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-16
Updated: 2013-04-16
Packaged: 2017-12-08 17:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/763885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five (or so) people who cut Connor's hair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	As The Tall Grasses Grow

1.

Her son’s hair grows fast and thick, like her own, and it seems like every other week, Ziio is bidding him to sit down for just a moment so that she can trim it back enough that it doesn’t get caught in tree branches. 

She almost regrets teaching him how to climb, but he would have tried soon enough on his own, and it’s best for him to know how to place his feet and balance properly. (There have already been a few occasions where Kanen’tó:kon came running back from the forest, saying that Ratohnhaké:ton was stuck up a tree and that he won’t admit it but he needs help getting down and he _told_ him that it was too high, but he wouldn’t listen, and please please Kaniehtí:io come get him because the squirrels are looking really hungry.)

“Hold still,” she chides, and he kicks his feet and sighs loudly, but settles. 

She’s done this enough times that she can trim off the ends before he gets restless, but there have been a few times where Ratohnhaké:ton ran off with his hair half-cut before she could catch him for long enough to get the rest of it. Nothing seems to keep him perched and still for long, not when there are rabbits to chase and stones to throw into the water and rocks to scramble over and elbows and hands to scrape on tree bark and be very brave about when she washes them clean.

“What do you say?” Ziio says when she is done, brushing the scraps of hair off his shoulders.

“Thank you, mother,” he recites, squirming at the prickly touch of hair clippings.

She presses a kiss to the sun-warm crown of his head (prompting him to wiggle out of her grasp and say, motherrrr) before giving him a push, and he tumbles off with the full-barrelled enthusiasm of his age, no doubt about to go throw himself into the river and convince Kanen’tó:kon to do the same. 

He is already growing so quickly, and it seems not so long ago that he was a babe, his hair wispy and soft.

Ziio remembers the comfort of pressing her face to his head and breathing his milk-sweet smell, remembers holding him in her lap and looking into his grave little face and tickling his feet until he waved his fists and let out a gurgling laugh. Remembers the realization that it was frightening to love anything, anyone so well as this. 

She keeps a lock of his hair pressed between the pages of the diary, a dark curl against the dark edges of ink. A reminder, of sorts.

 

2.

Kanen’tó:kon knows Ratohnhaké:ton doesn’t like his hair too long, and now, it hangs into his face when he skins a deer they brought down. When Kanen’tó:kon sees him nudge his hair irritably back over his shoulder for the fifth time today, painting deer blood through it, he already knows that he’ll later find Ratohnhaké:ton sawing at his bangs with a determined look on his face.

“I can do the back for you, if you want,” Kanen’tó:kon offers, because Ratohnhaké:ton is good with a knife, but it still makes Kanen’tó:kon nervous to see him wreaking havoc on his hair. 

Ratohnhaké:ton hands the knife to him and Kanen’tó:kon cards though his hair, assessing the damage. There’s a few raw edges that he can’t seem to straighten out without making it worse, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed if he cuts slowly and carefully. The back of Kanen’to:kon’s fingers brush the warm curve of Ratohnhaké:ton’s neck when he lifts the thick fall of his hair, and Kanen’tó:kon jerks back, narrowly avoiding clipping a good chunk of his hair off. 

“Sorry,” he says, without quite knowing what he’s apologizing for.

“What for?” Ratohnhaké:ton answers, curious, tilting his head back enough to catch his eye. “Did you chop a hunk off by accident?”

“I’m going to chop all your hair off not so accidentally if you keep moving,” Kanen’tó:kon says, turning Ratohnhaké:ton’s head to face forward again as he clips at the stray ends. He eventually decides that that it’s probably best to stop while the edge is still around the length that Ratohnhaké:ton had always kept. 

“It’s still a bit lopsided,” he says helplessly, but Ratohnhaké:ton just shrugs with one shoulder. It doesn’t look too bad, though, all things considered.

“Even if it is, it’ll grow out soon enough. Do you want me to do yours, too?” 

Kanen’tó:kon doesn’t need a trim, really, but he still shakes his hair out of his braids and lets Ratohnhaké:ton comb his fingers through its length, his hands careful and precise. He can’t help the shiver that goes down his back when Ratohnhaké:ton’s fingers draw over his scalp, and butts his head back into Ratohnhaké:ton’s palm. Ratohnhaké:ton obliges him with a puff of laughter, tracing firm circles at the base of his skull with his thumbs. 

“You’re worse than the dogs,” he says.

“Am not,” Kanen’tó:kon says. “Should I cut it short, like yours, for a change?”

“No, it looks nice long,” Ratohnhaké:ton says, all blunt honesty, and tucks the black wing of his hair back behind his ear, setting to the task with a steady concentration. 

Kanen’tó:kon bends his neck to make it easier to reach and hopes that he doesn’t notice the flush that he can feel prickling his ears.

 

3.

Achilles is used to correcting Connor’s stance with a knock of his cane to the knees, or a hand on his back to straighten his spine, but it is a necessary, pedagogical touch, and Connor’s loose hair parting over the back of his neck had seemed a strangely intimate thing the first time he had cut his hair. Connor’s hair is different, smoother and sleeker, and Achilles had not done this for a very long time. 

“Not too short, please?” Connor had asked him, after a moment’s hesitation, and Achilles knew that this was strange for him, too.

Now, there’s a time every few weeks when Connor drags a chair out to the porch and settles at his feet, handing him the scissors, and it’s an easy thing, a good thing. Achilles knows that home is just not the bounds of brick and stone, but also the more delicate structure of a quiet regularity, and Connor seizes upon it with a gladness that says that he, too, is all too aware of its fine balance; and so, the boy’s smooth hair between his fingers becomes routine, even if they had fought bitterly only hours ago or had just come back from the sea. 

It seems easier, somehow, to speak when they have the late afternoon sun on their backs and its long golden shine rippling over the bay.

Connor’s hair is still damp from washing the salt spray out, and he lifts his head to squint against the sun and look down at the Aquila, where she has been berthed for repairs. Achilles nudges his head back down to carefully snip at the fringe of hair.

Connor’s shoulders are loose and his hands are lightly curled in his lap; he is still, but it’s the stillness of a boy at the end of a full day, not that of a hunter in wait, and it makes Achilles’s heart glad. 

“Bend your head forward a bit, boy,” he says, and Connor does so, fingering a stain on his breeches.

“Did the pigs run off on you again?” Achilles asks. 

“Yes, again—one met me at the dock,” Connor says, all exasperation and fondness—a tone whose use is extremely familiar to Achilles. 

“A good way to end the voyage, then,” Achilles says, and though he has never been particularly fond of ships—much to Faulkner’s disappointment and faithfully terrible arsenal of landlubber jokes, which Achilles is quite sure have not changed since he had first clutched at Faulkner’s shoulder in the sway of a storm —he can see Connor’s fascination in the way the stories swell out of him like seawater, the curve of his hand describing the slap of a wave against the sides of the ship, the snap of wind in the sails, the tilt and sway of the deck, the unimaginable depths and far horizons. 

When Faulkner comes up the hill for tea, he claps Connor on the shoulder and says he looks right smart, very captainly, and Achilles can see Connor’s back straighten in pride under his hand. He smiles at them over the rim of his teacup.

 

4.

Before confronting the guards, Haytham straightens Connor’s coat, watching him bridle at the touch. He rolls his eyes. 

“Will this do, father?” Connor asks, holding out his hands. Haytham wonders, briefly, if he was quite this surly at that age. Perhaps, and he would have probably been no less convinced that it was justified. It didn’t make it any less immature, however. The boy is painfully young and blundering in affairs that he cannot understand, and is sure to get himself and others hurt for his actions.

Haytham straightens Connor’s hat, and tucks a strand of hair that has fallen out of Connor’s queue back where it belongs. “You need a trim,” Haytham says, “But it’ll do for our purposes.”

For once, he can’t read the flicker that passes over the boy’s face, and Connor has been so utterly, naively straightforward to date that it takes him aback for a moment. 

He decides not to dwell upon it. They have other things to concern themselves with.

 

5.

When Connor sets his blade to his temple and draws it back to leave the sides of his scalp bare, there are no one’s hands on the blade but his own. 

In the days after, he keeps running his fingers over his scalp, expecting to feel the swinging touch of beads against his cheek and meeting only skin.

It feels exposed. It is only hair, he thinks, and yet it feels as though he has shed something along with its weight, and he is still not sure what it is, and what he has gained in exchange. 

The beads he tucks in an inside pocket of his robes, close to his skin.

 

6.

Prudence hasn’t seen Connor much since the service. 

She knows that he is out in the city often, because his business never seems to slow, and she knows as well as anyone that life doesn’t do you the courtesy of stopping to let you breathe. He is always moving despite his healing wound, as though he were afraid to stop. 

Prudence doesn’t like to think of Connor alone in that big, empty house, and so she brings him a stew from the fine deer that Myriam brought down yesterday and the last straggling bits from the winter vegetables.

When she opens the door to the manor, she sees him in the kitchen, chest bare with a washbasin set upon the table. His hair has grown a bit since she last saw him, a short crop shadowing the sides of his head. His arm shakes as he raises his blade to the edge of his hair, the movement pulling on the wound on his side, still ugly and red, and his hand drops back down, a tremor in his fingers as he slowly places the knife beside the washbasin. He hangs his head for a moment, breathing, and then goes to pick up the knife again. 

She makes sure to close the door to signal her presence before she says, “Would you like some help with that?” 

Connor turns, eyes wide, and looks—not disappointed, but resigned, sad, for a moment, before his face smoothes out again. He hefts the knife in his hand, and it seems at once too-familiar and foreign in his grip. 

“Would you mind?” he says, at last.

He seats himself in front of her, arms crossed on the back of the chair, and he doesn’t say much while she lathers his hair, the short hair soft and prickly against her hand—but he’s never much been one for words, their Connor. The knife is well-honed enough to do the job with a light touch, baring the thin skin underneath when she drags the blade over it. 

“We should have a supper soon,” she says, carefully. She had always liked the meals at the big house on the hill: every third Sunday, or near to it, between the times that Connor was gone at sea or to the city. Rambunctious affairs, the kitchen crowded with pies and yams and corn and bread and a big leg of venison spitted in the fireplace, the smells fragrant and heavy in the hallway. The doors flung open in summer and gusting open in the winter to complaints and greetings with the arrival of more people. Achilles in the midst of it, directing where to put the dishes, the dining room table barely large enough to fit them all, the house full to the brink with food and warmth and people. 

There hasn’t been one for awhile.

Prudence takes the washcloth draped over the side of the washbasin and dries Connor’s head, and then runs her hand over his scalp to make sure that she didn’t miss anything.

“There,” she says. 

“Thank you,” says Connor. 

His head tips forward to rest against his crossed arms. Prudence puts a hand on the back of his neck, and the skin under her touch is fever-hot, and its heat isn’t the beginnings of illness that festers and thrives in wounds, she thinks, but something far deeper, a choking vine that curls around the good growth and squeezes tight tight tight and closes off all the light.

She feels him take a shuddering breath, and she circles her arms around his broad shoulders and holds steady until he stops shaking. 

She talks about the farm, and the new crops they’re thinking of putting in, now that their child is getting older and they have the time, and that Myriam might be expecting, from what they’re hearing, and that Godfrey has found a grove of maple trees that he might tap, since the winter had been good and cold, and that Oliver and Corinne were thinking of repainting the inn in spring-green. A good colour, she thinks.

When Prudence lets go, Connor sweeps up the scraps of dark hair, leaving the floor as spotlessly clean as the rest of the house.

She can’t be sure, but the tightness in his shoulders seems to have eased a bit—not completely, but as in all things, there is always time.

He asks her about next Sunday.


End file.
